the final countdown

LAST BLOG ENTRY! I am presenting the second Thursday of presentations during 9th period. I am really excited that my senior project is wrapping up soo nicely. I have my stories all done, except my mentor will read them over to put the cherry on top. My book in InDesign is exactly how I pictured it. Monday and Tuesday, since my brother and sister have school, I have all the quiet time I need to finish my book and send it in on Wednesday. I will have my book by the time we get back to school. Over break I will be working on putting the exhibition video together and slideshow.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEARS!

STRESSS

This week was just stressful and wrapped up with me getting sick. I want to say i got sick from stress. This book has turned to be harder to put together than i thought. Initially i hoped to finish by the 19th so I could just have it standard shipped. I had to figure out what day was the last day I could sent it to publishing with express shipping so that i can still get it in time. That day is the 23rd. This makes me feel a little better. I ended up working with InDesign because BookSmart was too restricted and I'm going to send it to blurb as a PDF. Right now I am focused on figuring out the things I know I won't be able to figure out so I can take to publishing about before the break. Overall, I do enjoy what I am doing but i didn't expect it to be as complicated as it is to make it as personal as i want it to be.

and now my favorite part

after weeks of creating, editing, deleting, and headaches I have finally complete my thirty stories. At this point the only thing left for them to be final revisions is for my mentor to read through and edit/comment and for my outside consultant to give me the seal of approval. Over the break i started doing my favorite and anticipated part. Although, it might be the most challenging because i have never done this, I knew that it would end up being the easiest in terms of making myself sit down and work and the part I'd have the most fun with. This is the digital creation and graphic design of the book. After extensive research I finally concluded that Blurb would be my publisher, but Blurb does not work with InDesign. Blurb has it's own book publishing program called BookSmart. Although I know Blurb will get my book right, they are more expensive than Lulu and my work isn't saved onto my computer it is uploaded to their site. So, if BookSmart or Blurb were to crash, I would not have a backup file. Since BookSmart is user friendly, i actually find it harder to work with because it is that straightforward. My biggest worry was realizing that it would take me longer than what I had expected because this was all new to me. But I knew that if i created the book first and then the stories to go along with it I would not have completed my book in time. While going through my process folio and my calendar I have decided to make a short video and slideshow (which I'll make over christmas break from the over 3000 pictures and over 4 hours of footage I have) to go along with my book for presentation. I had mentioned early that no matter how well I described an event in my book, it would never be close to doing justice to what actually happened. After talking to Sylvia about this and she told me of her plan to do a model of the homestead. Thus, we wanted to have my book and her paper next to each other with the video/slideshow playing behind them and hopefully the model nearby.

thanksgiving break

as thanksgivings break is eminent i fear my time is running short. By Monday the 30th I must have all 30 stories finished and ready for my outside consultant to read through and edit. I am about halfway done so over the break I have to knock out the rest. As for the actual book, I am starting the put together stage as soon as we get back to school because I need a program that is not on our laptops. I will create a hand drawn layout of the book and paste in the stories to play around with how I want to book to look. As time is closing in I know I have a little less than a month to have a complete product. I know I will finish if i keep my focus to my deadlines. I hope the next trimester is a little easier than the first, but cheerleading is going to take up a lot of my time so I know that senior project will be every free moment I have.

projecting towards the future and a glimpsof the past

Going through my photos I can across this video of the day of feast. This video was form after we killed and unfeathered the chicken. It's basically the anatomy of a chicken and how to prep one after killing it.

Watching this video really made me wish there was some way you could put videos in books. Sure i have pictures of the whole process and I can give you a play by play of what happened, but there is no way my reader is going to imagine what happens the way this video and other show it to really be.

Meetings, workshop, decisions

Oct. 30- After Mrs. Parkes got me in touch with the lower school librarian, we sent several e-mails back and forth about my project. Eventually, I scheduled a time to meet with her. I went to the lower school and looked around the library while I waited for Ms. Miller to come. She was scheduled to have a class at 10 am so I came at 9 am. By 9:55 am she still had not come so I left her a note on the desk. A couple hours later she e-mailed me and we rescheduled for Monday at 3:45pm.

Nov. 2- I met with Wonda Miller. She showed me the books she had put aside for me to look at and that she thought would serve as a good guide. I ended up taking about 4 books with me, mainly based on either their layout or writing style. Ms. Miller was extremely friendly and helpful in terms finding what I needed and helping guide my way. She mentioned to me that she has a friend who works at the Sag harbor library who is could help me out and would probably be interested in my project. She is also a publisher and editor and would serve as a great outside consultant. On that note I was so grateful for her help and went straight work.

Nov. 5- I got an email from Ms. Miller saying she had visited her friend, Cathy Creedon the author, and is very excited about my project and wanted be to visit her. She also told be about a writing program that they are offering for teens beginning at 5:00pm that night. It was being conducted by Carla Riccio, she is a writer, teacher and editor. It runs the 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month starting today and going through May. This could be a very useful forum for me to have additional writing help with my book. Carla is familiar with the publication process and could be a valuable connection. Not knowing much about the program or these authors and it being such short notice I went to the meeting in a rush of excitement. When I got there, I was very happy to see the diversity in people that were talking the class. I was the only Ross student there, everyone else was from Pierson, but each person was a very defined individual. We introductions and talked about why we were talking the class. We also did several poetry exercises and read. The workshop ended at 6:30pm and every Thursday at 6:30pm they have an author come to the library until 8pm to talk about their books and answer questions about them. Most of the authors there are have several publications. Thursdays was a science fiction/mystery author and I've never really liked this genre of stories so I didn't stay. But next weeks author I will go see and hopefully talk to about my project and maybe get insight from them too.

For the coming week I am working on wrapping up 10 stories. As the first week of november ends I feel pressured to finish my 30 stories, at least a rough draft by the 16th. By doing this I am going to have to race through final drafts with hopefully some of these editors and get started on my books. I am still debating whether to use blurb or lulu. AHHH! That is my biggest problem right now because i want my book to look the exactly the way I want to it and if i pick the wrong publisher I'm afraid of feeling like my work went to waste. I want the month of December to be mostly about the actual layout of the book so that by Christmas break I am ordering copies.
Even though this sounds so far away, for me its right around the corner.

story titles

I started writing the stories and I so far I have done the first two. It was then that I started to wonder if each individual story should have a title. The overall book is going to be called Backyard Livestock Homestead. Originally, I planned on naming the days as they go, day 1 day 2, day 3, etc., but I feel like it would give each individual story more meaning if it had a title.
I have not worked BookSmart or InDesign yet because I don't know which one publishing site, lulu and Blurb, I want to use. I was leaning towards Lulu and I was going to work with InDesign, but I don't know how well the graphics and color come out with Lulu. BookSmart is the program Blurb uses, but I don't know what the quality of the actual book is going to be like. Without deciding this I can't start designing the book because I can't switch between programs. I think it's better to write my stories and have the perspective images ready before I begin putting the book together. I don't have any experience publishing books though so I'm not sure if this is the best thing to do.
As I think about my book I keep coming up with all theses themes and ideas that i want to flow throughout. Since i keep track of how much milk and how many eggs I collected each day I thought about having a small picture graph on each day to show the progress. I also thought about putting clocks at the start and end of the day. After all these different types of graphics I figured there should be a sample page in the beginning point out what everything is, like in encyclopedias.
Writing the single stories has actually turned out to be harder than I though it would be because I want each story to mean something and i don't want all of them to mesh together.
This week I'm going to write more stories and hopefully figure out which program and publisher I'm going to use.